Cravings

I left work today around 7:15PM with my mind made up that dinner was definitely going to be a comfort food meal. My ideal comfort food would be deep dish 4 cheese pizza with garlic, onion, and green pepper from Chicago Dough Company. This meal would also be accompanied by a Blue Hulk, which tastes like a blueberry Jolly Rancher soaked in booze.

I love deep dish pizza. It is the alpha pizza, the end-all-be-all of pizzas, the mother of all pizzas, and it deserves to be viewed with admiration for all its wonderful perfection.

I started working at Chicago Dough Company when I was sixteen years old. I was hired as a dishwasher and I’m pretty sure the manager did not think I would last more than a couple of weeks. Boy did I prove him wrong! For my first shift they put me on during the busiest night of the week, working alongside a middle-aged Hispanic man who spoke close to no English at all. This didn’t intimidate me though, I used my background from my Spanish 1 class to ask him a few questions and find out where some of the dishes needed to go.

Two weeks later the managers asked me to start shifts in the kitchen where I would learn how to make every type of specialty pizza known to man. This is where I truly discovered my love for deep dish pizza. A couple weeks after that I was asked to move to delivery driver and then to work phones. Before I knew it I was the head hostess and waiting tables. I continued to advance through the restaurant, exceeding expectations along the way.

When I went away to college I would only work at the restaurant during breaks and over the summer. Although I did not go far for school, I rarely made it home. I would often sit in my dorm room, or apartment and crave my deep dish pizza. Every time I would come home I would inevitably make an excuse to visit the restaurant to assuage my cravings.

So tonight as I was driving home, in the opposite direction of the restaurant, I longed for my comfort food. What I found as I opened my freezer was a frozen Jacks pizza. Making the best out of the situation, I sprinkled a layer of garlic and onion powder and then covered it with another layer of cheese. Now as I sit here typing this post, eating my cardboard thin pizza, and drinking my Revolution beer (at least I have good beer), I am counting down the days until I can indulge in my comfort food.